“When we turn pro we stop running from our fears. We turn around and face them.”

The Spartans say that any army may win while it still has legs under it; the real test comes when all strength is fled and the men must produce victory on will alone.

Stay stupid. Follow your unconventional crazy heart.

Don’t prepare. Begin. Our enemy is not lack of preparation. The enemy is resistance, our chattering brain producing excuses. Start before you are ready.

The professional respects his craft. He does not consider himself superior to it. He recognizes the contributions of those who have gone before him. He apprentices himself to them.

When we see others beginning to live their authentic selves, it drives us crazy if we have not lived out our own.

The most pernicious aspect of procrastination is that it can become a habit. We don’t just put off our lives today; we put them off till our deathbed.

When we’re living as amateurs, we’re running away from our calling – meaning our work, our destiny, the obligation to become our truest and highest selves.

Defeating Resistance is like giving birth. It seems absolutely impossible until you remember that women have been pulling it off successfully, with support and without, for fifty million years.

Ignorance and arrogance are the artist’s and entrepreneur’s indispensable allies. She must be clueless enough to have no idea how difficult her enterprise is going to be and cocky enough to believe she can pull it off anyway.”

The amateur believes he must first overcome his fear; then he can do his work. The professional knows that fear can never be overcome. He knows there is no such thing as a fearless warrior or a dread-free artist.

Resistance by definition is self-sabotage.

What finally convinced me to go ahead was simply that I was so unhappy not going ahead.

The amateur tweets. The pro works.

Every sun casts a shadow, and genius’s shadow is Resistance.

I wrote in the War of Art that I could divide my life neatly into two parts: before turning pro and after. After is better.

This man has conquered the world! What have you done?” The philosopher replied without an instant’s hesitation, “I have conquered the need to conquer the world.

The story of Pakistan, its struggle and its achievement, is the very story of great human ideals, struggling to survive in the face of great odds and difficulties.

I wonder if to stare into the face of God will drive me crazy. (I wonder who would blink first.)

The industry has changed. Two years ago I could tell a company I’ve got Russell Crowe and that would get the film made. Now they’d ask ‘And who’s the girl?’ Just one famous face isn’t enough any more.

He put his cold hands on either side of my face and fixed his golden eyes on mine. Would you please tell me what you’re thinking? Before I go mad?

A woman knows the face of the man she loves as a sailor knows the open sea.

I stared because their faces, so different, so similar, were all devastatingly, inhumanly beautiful.

Edward helped, making faces every so often at the raw ingredients-human food was mildly repulsive to him.

Forbearance in the face of fate, beauty constant under torture, are not merely passive. They are a positive achievement, an explicit triumph.